Critical Mass: How Nazi Germany Surrendered Enriched Uranium for the United States' Atomic Bomb

On May 19, 1945, eleven days after the surrender of Nazi Germany in Europe, a U-boat was escorted into Portsmouth Naval Yard, New Hampshire. News reporters covering the surrender of U-234 were ordered, contrary to all previous and later U-boat surrender procedures, to keep their distance from crew members and passengers of U-234, on threat of being shot by the attending Marine guards. Why the tight security? Buried in the nose of the specially-built mammoth boat, sealed in cylinders “lined ...